Designing Tomorrow: Creative Strategies for Social Impact

Every leader in the social impact space has failures. But we rarely talk about them. We brush over them, reframe them, paper over them. Michelle Moog-Koussa thinks that's a mistake. She built the Bob Moog Foundation from $15,000 and a stack of Bob's crossed-out notebooks into a 20-year institution, and she runs it like a scientist: write down the idea, test it, and record an ...

Every nonprofit leader has told themselves the same story: if funders just understood us, they'd fund us. Eric and Jonathan make the uncomfortable case that misunderstood impact is usually a you problem, and that what looks like a storytelling gap is almost always an identity gap. Close it, and funding, talent, and trust all get easier.

Episode Highlights: 

Most leaders know how to fight through a crisis. Almost nobody's ready for the moment things start working.

That's where Jonathan finds himself. Five years into running the Seymour Center, the survival years behind him. Funding's solid. The team's humming. He walks the halls, thinks "we're good," and tells me that stability feels strange. Almost uncomfortable. Like a pr...

Is culture something you design, or does it emerge from the people you hire? I think you design it, through the decisions you make every day. Jonathan thinks it starts with the people and grows from there. The more we talked, the more the two came together: culture isn't your values poster, it's the consistent decisions a team makes over and over, plus the guardrails and tool...

Two camps are forming around AI in the social impact space. One says boycott it. The other says you're already behind. Meanwhile, the biggest decisions are being made without us. 

Kaz McGrath and Stephen Silveira of Play (PLAI — Purpose-Led AI) make the case for stepping into the conversation, holding space for skeptics and builders at the same table, and using AI as a ...